Why I Switched To Showit From Squarespace
I absolutely lovvve Showit!
If you have been following me for some time (or have just peaked at my site now) I’m sure it’s quite obvious.
But honestly, I just have to take a moment and allow my obsessive-ness to show! I really really love it you guys…
And I get it, I’m not talkin’ about a man here, I’m talking about a website building platform…
But it’s a damn sexy website building platform!
And that’s kinda why I ended up making the decision to start building websites exclusively on Showit.
Let’s do a little recap…
When I first launched my business (and way before that) I was using Squarespace. I am forever grateful for Squarespace because it brought me into the world of website design.
I had built a website for a previous business of mine when I was doing hair (yay, proud ex-hairstylist over here). And I had used Squarespace for that – it quite literally blew my mind.
I had no idea that I would be able to build a website… for myself…
Now, it wasn’t easy for me to do if I’m being perfectly honest.
I had a lot to learn. I spent countless hours and weeks researching how to personalize my template.
But the thing is, I really did enjoy figuring it all out. I had accidentally stumbled upon a skill I actually really enjoyed doing.
I fell in love with website design! I really did. So much so that I kept at it. I had published my website for that biz but I kept trying to learn and create new sites for fake businesses just to play around with SS.
Eventually, I invested in some SS courses and really got to learn how to use the platform. And then *spoiler alert* I launched my website design biz!
Safe to say, at this point Squarespace was the only website building platform I had spent time learning and knew how to use comfortably!
Everything was finnne and dandy…
Until…
I would see these incredibly stunning, beautiful, drool worthy websites. And I would think to myself “that is what I want my designs to look like”.
I will say this about myself, I hold myself to a very high standard even when I know I don’t yet have a certain skill. I will figure it out until I have said skill.
Prime example was when I was a hairstylist. In my first couple of years when I was still learning, you’re always learning in any creative industry, but right in the beginning. I would do someone’s hair and they would love it and I’d say to myself “this could be so much better”. And I always knew I would figure out how to make it better for the next client.
I don’t want to just perform a service and have my clients be happy with it. I want to create something so beautiful that my clients are ecstatic, jumping off the walls, so excited to show their friends and family, excited!
And to be honest, I just wasn’t able to provide those results with SS.
Don’t get me wrong, the designs I made for my previous clients, I am super happy with and know they loved them. But I want to continue growing as a Designer and I could only see two ways of doing that.
-
Learn some code and continue with SS (or purchase code every time I come across a design barrier)
-
Learn a platform that I was able to freely design in.
There are some incredible Squarespace Designers who create absolutely stunning websites… who are having to use code.
The one big thing that would always haunt me (I know, I’m so dramatic) was not knowing if certain things were possible.
Like if a client requested a certain design layout/functionality I wanted to feel confident if I could do it or not. Not wonder if I could find a code for that or not.
And with Showit, I know what I can do.
There are some limits within Showit (not design related) and a couple of things that Squarespace had within its native capabilities that I’m like “hey Showit, tha’d be cool if you could do that”.
But the ability to freely design and create a beautiful and strategically designed website outweighs those little setbacks any day.
K, now that I’ve told you my life story…
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Here are some key reasons I switched over to Showit from Squarespace!
Design capabilities
I’m sorry, did I already mention this?
For real though, the design capabilities within Showit are endless. As a creative, I can really build a website exactly how I envision it.
And that’s huge, not just for me but for my clients. Being able to bring their visions to life is my favorite thing to do.
When I say full creative freedom, I mean I can literally style every. little. centimeter on that website. And it’s a feeling of pure bliss
When I started learning about designing in Showit I would hear Designers say it was very “intuitive”.
And I would think to myself “that’s an interesting word to describe it” but like, just thought that’s a random word she chose. But then I heard more Designers call it “intuitive”. And I was like “okay, cool.”
But when I started designing in Showit. Let me just say…
Designing in Showit is so intuitive!
Like, I get it now. That’s exactly what it is.
I felt such a deep creative block when I was using SS because I was quite limited in the design aspect.
But with Showit, it really just flows out of me. I don’t have to save inspiration images, I mean there’s no harm in doing that, but even if I have a few inspiration pieces saved I rarely use them.
The design kind of just flows out of you intuitively 😉
Independent Mobile Layout
This is huge.
You can literally design your mobile website layout completely independently of your desktop layout!
I’ll be honest, I never thought a sentence like that could get me so excited. But here we are…
What does this mean for your website?
We all know that close to 50% of website traffic now comes from mobile devices. (don’t quote me on that, I have a post on website stats, this is not it).
So if close to half of your website visitors are viewing your site on their phones, it’s gotta look gooooddd on their phones.
You can design your mobile layout to look exactly how you want it to and have it look completely different on desktop. I wouldn’t recommend that, but the option is there.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you are reading this then you know that I blog.
The purpose of blogging is to attract new visitors to my website as a marketing strategy and to provide valuable information to my clients/potential clients.
Now, if I am putting in this amount of work blogging every single week to provide you with information that I think will benefit you, I am really hoping you see it!
And the way to ensure you see it is by ranking highly on Google (and other search engines). And to do that my website needs to be set with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind.
There are things you can do to ensure your website is set up with basic SEO. However, what’s going to really help get your website in front of people is if you blog. That’s right, it really does help!
(or if you have some form of consistent posting like adding to your portfolio)
Imagine if you and a competitor have the exact same website and you’re both set up with SEO on your site. You continue blogging and adding to your SEO and your competitor just sits back and relaxes. Your website will be more optimized for SEO than your competitors.
You will have more keywords throughout your site, your website will be more active by regularly adding to it and you are giving your site visitors a reason to come back and read and learn more.
Showit integrates with WordPress for blogging.
This is amazing because you get the beautiful design of Showit and then the power of WordPress for your blog which works with the Yoast SEO plugin.
If that sounded super foreign to you, don’t worry. Basically, it’s the best platform for SEO and getting your site seen!
WordPress is also the oldest in the game and the most common platform used by bloggers.
I don’t want to completely discredit Squarespace here. Squarespace has a great built in blogging functionality. However, the SEO results just do not compare to those from a WordPress powered blog.
So especially if you do want your website to be searchable and show up on Google – Showit is your best bet!
These are just a few reasons, clearly I could go on and on but I won’t do that to you!
If you are ready to get started with Showit for your website I would absolutely love to help you out with that! You can either book a free consultation to see how we can work together or feel free to browse my blog posts to learn more if you want to DIY the thing!
Xo.
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